*UPDATED* DE Steve tweet: Melee incremental upgrade phase #1. Melee Rework. New Fx and Melee 2.9 Dev Workshop Friday.

[Loza03]

They're also going to be working on being able to juggle airborne enemies with guns, which I suppose soft-confirms some kind of launcher to actually make use of that mechanic. Probably not a DMC style one though since they've already said that using gameplay too much like that wouldn't work with WF's horde gameplay. - I expect it'll be more similar to how Paracesis and Gram Prime slams work.

 

[Spawnbold]

With all that new information about 2.9 and the removal of manual blocking...
does that mean we will also lose the normal melee mode? Not a huge fan of the "quick melee"...

[DanteYoda]

Hope all this doesn't wreck ranged gameplay..

[CrazyValkyr]

23 hours ago, A-p-o-l-l-y-o-n said:

I'm one of the few who doesn't like this new change at all. But it's so obvious most of these people here and on Twitter rarely equip their melee. They didn't even realize that animation in the video was old. That's how little they pull out their melee weapons. I don't like spamming E to swing my melee weapon, and I don't like using guns in Warframe, mainly because I'm use to shooters where your gun is always pointed forward. I also don't like many of Warframe's guns. I'm definitely one of those players that prefers a dedicated melee mode. But I can't say I'm surprised. Ever since Reb mentioned changing quick melee, I had a suspicion that they were basically reworking melee around quick melee and gun play. And that's basically what this is.

You're not alone in that regard. 

It's fine they want to make swapping weapons more seamless, for people who like to mix and match weapons. I get it, and it's not a bad idea per-say. If people want to mix and match weapons, if it can be made smoother - great.

But it shouldn't come at a cost of making other options impossible. I am melee player myself, I only ever carry melee weapons to all my missions, and don't bother with guns. Both I don't enjoy gunplay, as well as if I don't equip it, it saves me hassle to have to swap to full on melee. Melee is what got me interested in the game in the first place, been around for 3 years because of it. The way things seem to be going is, Warframe is changing that one unique thing, to blend in with other similar games of this genre - guns play major role, while melee is sorta.. sidelined. It was simply nice to be able to choose, if you liked one or the other & while there is a benefit of this change for players who want to seamlessly change, it may essentially make the option of playing just the melee impossible.

Anyways - this change can pose several problems for people like us. The right button switching back to gun? Why? What if I don't want that? Let alone that right button, in movement, is for jumpgliding and parkour, and when you're in a gun mode, it'll change your entire FoV, which is different to FoV while in full melee mode, and that gun-mode FoV is entirely impractical for melee players.

I don't want to go too indepth into the unreleased system, but as someone who played melee (full melee, not quick melee) all this time, this has several rather crappy implications already. It may even be so, that you won't be able equip just the melee weapon anymore,  & even if we are - even that may not remove the obstructions this new system may bring - depending how well the keybinds can be changed or not.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

Everything sounds great.  especially the juggling enemies with gunfire.  Only concern thus far is auto blocking.  It's probably only done with your melee out.  Which is fine.  But I hope it doesn't interrupt other actions.  As a melee enthusiest I'm not bothered.  Melee in this game is pretty brain dead.  It only felt better because it was marginally more interactive than gunplay.  I think it's a bold move to mix both.  But the potential to make combat as a whole better is deff there.  Gotta wait and see.

[OniDax]

1 hour ago, CrazyValkyr said:

You're not alone in that regard. 

It's fine they want to make swapping weapons more seamless, for people who like to mix and match weapons. I get it, and it's not a bad idea per-say. If people want to mix and match weapons, if it can be made smoother - great.

But it shouldn't come at a cost of making other options impossible. I am melee player myself, I only ever carry melee weapons to all my missions, and don't bother with guns. Both I don't enjoy gunplay, as well as if I don't equip it, it saves me hassle to have to swap to full on melee. Melee is what got me interested in the game in the first place, been around for 3 years because of it. The way things seem to be going is, Warframe is changing that one unique thing, to blend in with other similar games of this genre - guns play major role, while melee is sorta.. sidelined. It was simply nice to be able to choose, if you liked one or the other & while there is a benefit of this change for players who want to seamlessly change, it may essentially make the option of playing just the melee impossible.

Anyways - this change can pose several problems for people like us. The right button switching back to gun? Why? What if I don't want that? Let alone that right button, in movement, is for jumpgliding and parkour, and when you're in a gun mode, it'll change your entire FoV, which is different to FoV while in full melee mode, and that gun-mode FoV is entirely impractical for melee players.

I don't want to go too indepth into the unreleased system, but as someone who played melee (full melee, not quick melee) all this time, this has several rather crappy implications already. It may even be so, that you won't be able equip just the melee weapon anymore,  & even if we are - even that may not remove the obstructions this new system may bring - depending how well the keybinds can be changed or not.

What they have basically done is made a melee rework that caters to players who don't primarily use melee weapons. They most certainly did not have in mind players who mainly use melee weapons.

Edited February 16, 2019 by A-p-o-l-l-y-o-n

[(PSN)Onder6099]

Guardian Derision? Electromagnetic Shielding?

[XenMaster]

On 2019-02-15 at 12:30 PM, Gurpgork said:

Wait, did he say this works on Exalteds?? Hot damn. That's a game changer for Baruuk, that's for sure. It's probably a game changer all around. 

Some monk with machine gun is good duo.

[Guest]

The only thing that annoys me about this change is that I cannot use left click as my melee button anymore. I guess the RSI on my left hand will worsen after all.

Edited February 16, 2019 by Guest

[Noabettiet]

Well ..from what i can gather everyone is fine with this, because they never used block before. Good thinking, definitely will not bite your arses after, right?

I am being sarcastic, but honestly I wouldn't LIKE to see it go like that, blocking has the potential to add a bit more complexity to melee, it was never refined and improperly forgot after melee 2.0, much like parrying was.
If you ever played a game with the smallest amount of good melee action, you'd know this. For gods sake, they can even add an timed block thing going on.

But then what do i know, i doubt anyone will even care.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Meh

Edited February 16, 2019 by Zilchy

[Aldain]

11 minutes ago, Noabettiet said:

If you ever played a game with the smallest amount of good melee action, you'd know this.

I love Metal Gear Rising and the like as much as the next guy, but Warframe, even before today's hyper damage meta didn't favor melee in the fashion where blocking was beneficial.

The issue with blocking in this game is that dodging damage is a better method for survival than reducing it (abilities notwithstanding). Unlike say MGR where blocking negates the damage completely (in most cases) all you're doing in Warframe is blocking percentages of damage from enemies that use guns rather than melee weapons, which unlike a more static game (see MGR again) has the potential to scale to the point where damage no matter how heavily reduced will still melt players.

As for melee enemies, they are so limited and barebones that blocking or parrying their blows often comes at the cost of getting shot in the everything waiting for their painfully slow windup.

Most action games I've played actually wind up nudging players to evade or combo-lock enemies rather than block, Devil May Cry (3 and 4 specifically) always felt better to me in blademaster or gunslinger than royal guard. Getting to the point where defense is less necessary as players grow and become able to read enemies and evade attacks is a very common state of affairs in traditional action games.

While I agree that complexity could be added by blocking, you need to consider the state and general status of how the game's build could work with the more complex concepts. Warframe doesn't have the structure to support this kind of complexity and aside from a complete overhaul of how enemies behave and how damage functions, and that caliber of overhaul would require a large amount of time and effort that may or may not see any meaningful improvement and may in face alienate the playerbase from the sheer magnitude of changes needed.

[Hypernaut1]

17 hours ago, Lakais said:

I'm going to hold of judgement on anything before I actually get to try it out. I am liking quite many things I see but there are SOME things that worry me. The blocking thing is possibly one but very minor. I also wonder if the pistol+glaive combo system is going to be tweaked or simply removed. I fear it's the later but... time will tell. I have been using that mode extensively as of late and I find it very fun and would be dismayed to see it go the way of the dodo. 

My other and somewhat ironic issue is that the weapon swap seems too fast. It feels... cheap. Again, I can't say that with all certainty, but what I see from the clips basically means that we sort of warp weapons from one to the other. It takes away some of that "weight" a weapon has. Weird as it sounds. I mean, this is also something that makes the AW weapons feel "weighty" in ground combat IS that equip animation. Now clearly it's a bit excessive or otherwise needs some sort of shield to balance out the obsenely long animation lock time, but the point stands. When our standard weapons just ZIP into our hands with no clear, short animation of our frames actually switching to them, then they feel "cheap" or in the worst case like some kind of dev-build where no one bothered to hook up weapon switch animations and just shipped it out of blatant laziness. 

Again, I can say more about my own opinions when I actually get to try it. 

You articulated perfectly how I feel about the skipped animations too. 

Unfortunately, it seems like most people don't care about that and would be happy with insta swapping an entire arsenal at will of they could. 

It's one of those things where players only see the animation as a pointless disadvantage.

The other things that irks me, is how bullets don't come out of end of the him when flying in archwing. 

I'm sure I'll get used to it, but insta swapping without any transition animation is a real turn off for me. 

[SneakyErvin]

14 hours ago, OvisCaedo said:

well i hate the melee system as a whole and nothing they're proposing about changes going forward makes it interesting to me, BUT!

this probably also means I'll be able to just dagger finisher enemies with Ivara's exalted bow out! So I guess this'll be a net positive for me in the end since I've got nothing to lose!

About time they remove the movement restrictions for Nyx's #4 if they are going to let Kitty use guns in her Hysteria mode.

I guess the new thing will be Kitty fully built for Hysteria while rocking a Lenz, Prisma Angstrum, Zarr or other silly high damage self damage AoE wipe weapon.

edit: I can just see it now, Kitty shoving a Zarr up in the face of Vey Hek and going "Dodge this! *kablamoo!*".

Edited February 16, 2019 by SneakyErvin

[Loza03]

2 hours ago, Noabettiet said:

If you ever played a game with the smallest amount of good melee action, you'd know this. For gods sake, they can even add an timed block thing going on.

Devil May Cry is an example of a game which has no need for a block maneuver, as is Bayonetta as the block in that game is an accessory not a core mechanic. Devil May Cry 3, 4, and 5 have them in the form of Royal Guard, but in 3 it's also entirely optional as you have to select it from the shop, and in 4 and 5 you have to swap to it from boosted dodge moves, gun attacks or melee attacks.

Metal Gear Rising Revengence is an example of how the system can make your combat worse as the block in that game is a First-Order-Optimal strategy since if you constantly tap forward whilst  attacking you're basically invincible. And, as I mentioned before, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy has a widely-beloved combat system with a similar automatic block. All of these have a heavy focus on melee combat. Even Jedi Knight, which is officially a First-Person Shooter, heavily discourages the use of guns as many enemies are Force Users with lightsabers rendering them functionally immune from the guns.

Blocking is not a neccecity for deep Melee combat. Now, don't get me wrong, I can still see 3.0 not being very deep, but 2.0 isn't all that deep to begin with on its own. One of the reasons I'm personally excited for this change - real-time weapon switching increases the depth by effectively granting players more choices in any moment instead of a long-winded switch.

[Hypernaut1]

1 hour ago, SneakyErvin said:

About time they remove the movement restrictions for Nyx's #4 if they are going to let Kitty use guns in her Hysteria mode.

I guess the new thing will be Kitty fully built for Hysteria while rocking a Lenz, Prisma Angstrum, Zarr or other silly high damage self damage AoE wipe weapon.

edit: I can just see it now, Kitty shoving a Zarr up in the face of Vey Hek and going "Dodge this! *kablamoo!*".

I honestly don't like the sound of that. 

[Acos]

I'm not bothered by the loss of an activated block. You either simply held down the block button indefinitely, which is tedious, or you never used the button at all. Blocking has no mechanics built around it; You don't time your block, you don't manage a stamina bar, MHW or Dark Souls this is not. For me this seems more like a quality of life issue that also addresses a button bloat problem they are having as well. 

I see a lot of people commenting on these changes from a gunner perspective, but as a primary melee player I have wanted something akin to a 'quick shot' option for awhile. It will be nice to be able to easily and quickly peg a far away target or hit the weak spot with my side arm without having to clumsily switch weapons back and forth to do it. I think this change will ultimately open up a lot of avenues of gameplay and help the flow of battle tremendously, and I'm okay sacrificing some mods and mechanics to do it. 

As a tip for everyone else who is going to struggle with their keybinds: My set up for the last 5 years for just about every FPS with melee game that I play is for the shoot button on the LMB, Melee on RMB, Aiming with shift, and typically SPRINT is q or bound to one of my gaming mouse buttons. I can't imagine trying to do any kind of melee with a keyboard command as that hand should be doing movement related tasks. I'll have 0 issues switching to this new control scheme. Maybe try it out? 
 

Edited February 19, 2019 by Acos

[Gurpgork]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

About time they remove the movement restrictions for Nyx's #4 if they are going to let Kitty use guns in her Hysteria mode.

I guess the new thing will be Kitty fully built for Hysteria while rocking a Lenz, Prisma Angstrum, Zarr or other silly high damage self damage AoE wipe weapon.

edit: I can just see it now, Kitty shoving a Zarr up in the face of Vey Hek and going "Dodge this! *kablamoo!*".

To be fair, invincibility on Hysteria is a mechanic that really has a ton of issues to begin with. And if it’s going to get the instant melee switching, then I could easily see other changes happening to the ability. 

[(PSN)Silverback73]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

About time they remove the movement restrictions for Nyx's #4 if they are going to let Kitty use guns in her Hysteria mode.

I guess the new thing will be Kitty fully built for Hysteria while rocking a Lenz, Prisma Angstrum, Zarr or other silly high damage self damage AoE wipe weapon.

edit: I can just see it now, Kitty shoving a Zarr up in the face of Vey Hek and going "Dodge this! *kablamoo!*".

Been proposing this for months.  Make the Assimilate Augment Standard (30%) and the Augment 75% of movement speed.

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

I honestly don't like the sound of that. 

Same,

1 hour ago, Gurpgork said:

To be fair, invincibility on Hysteria is a mechanic that really has a ton of issues to begin with. And if it’s going to get the instant melee switching, then I could easily see other changes happening to the ability. 

The few drawbacks she currently have will be gone the moment she can use ranged weapons in hysteria. There is a reason I currently bring Rhino or Rev to things like Sargas Ruk or Vey Hek, because they are durable to stay at range and shoot the weakpoint. If I'm built for hysteria on Valkyr I wont have armor or vita mods, heck I wont have any survival mods at all. When/if these changes go through without any rebalancing of hysteria, she will simply phase out those two frames for boss killing because she'll be able to shoot as needed, be invulnerable and then open up a can when the right weakpoint/phase opens up. Heck, she will probably be really good at orb fights aswell.

It may not look like much of an issue now due to how the game is, but it will deffinently put some serious balances issues out there for future content if they want to make the game more challenging.

edit: However, these changes are great for someone like Baruuk that struggles versus heavy units. He will be able to rely on SS for trash and AoE then quickly go over for a heavy hitter for the heavies.

Edited February 16, 2019 by SneakyErvin

[Gurpgork]

30 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

When/if these changes go through without any rebalancing of hysteria, she will simply phase out those two frames for boss killing because she'll be able to shoot as needed, be invulnerable and then open up a can when the right weakpoint/phase opens up.

My thoughts exactly. Infinite god mode toggle Hysteria is something I’ve wanted to see gone pretty much as long as it’s been in the game. It’s really not necessary to buff Hysteria. 

[SneakyErvin]

14 minutes ago, Gurpgork said:

My thoughts exactly. Infinite god mode toggle Hysteria is something I’ve wanted to see gone pretty much as long as it’s been in the game. It’s really not necessary to buff Hysteria. 

I think they could change hysteria into a 90% damage reduction mechanic along with the life leech. That would make her more than durable enough, especially with her innate high armor and option to increase it further without modding simply by using War Cry. That would also give her the option to reliably use things like rage or adrenaline. It would also make her more balanced around using ranged weapons while in hysteria.

[Autongnosis]

il y a 17 minutes, SneakyErvin a dit :

It would also make her more balanced around using ranged weapons while in hysteria.

It would actually make her completely broken, but that's for another day. 

Back to the instant switch and auto block, imo it's better to have instant swap than it is to have that longass equip animation we have. I mean, shortening it up could work but I'll take the proposed change over the current system any day. 

Also because if you equip melee then start attacking right away it doesn't actually move you into full melee mode until you stop attacking and then complete the equipping animation. 

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, Autongnosis said:

It would actually make her completely broken, but that's for another day.  

Well that depends. Baruuk will currently achieve the same thing minus the life leech, but with higher DR from his kit if they go through with the fast swapping for exalted+range.

He currently sits on up to 50% DR from passive, up to 90% DR from #3 and 40% DR from #4 toggled, this ontop of being completely immune to attacks when not actively attacking aswell. Life leech from Hysteria would obviously not transfer over to her ranged attacks, she would simply have the DR, which would be more balanced than her hard immunity in the current hysteria form.

The risk is however that they will simply have instant transition, so when you do equip the ranged weapon you completely lose hysteria. This would require completely different modding if you wanna utilize ranged on an otherwise full hysteria build. You simply cannot skip the survival mods anymore at that point.

[Rakosta_Kai]

6 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Devil May Cry is an example of a game which has no need for a block maneuver, as is Bayonetta as the block in that game is an accessory not a core mechanic. Devil May Cry 3, 4, and 5 have them in the form of Royal Guard, but in 3 it's also entirely optional as you have to select it from the shop, and in 4 and 5 you have to swap to it from boosted dodge moves, gun attacks or melee attacks.

Those (including MG:R) are moreso chain-combo games than they are melee games though as they fold in a lot of autoaim, combos, dodges, QTs, and specials.

All are awesome games, but I don't get the sense that Warframe should feel like either of them...maybe that's just me though.

If we were going to compare a Capcom game that Warframe should probably be feeling most like, it would be Onimusha imo...which, incidentally, had a block button and many of those other features too.

6 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy has a widely-beloved combat system with a similar automatic block.

...And it's most famous and enduring mod (MBII) just so happens to add a block to increase player engagement. 

Simply put, it really can be argued in both directions...What's important to note is that DE is apparently scrapping the Block function for something else and some will appreciate the change while others won't.

For me, it took me more than a year to adopt to even using the new version of the Operator after the change from the old version  (and I still only barely use the thing)...I have no clue how difficult it will be for me to adopt this new combat setup...That's going to suck for me as I use melee quite a bit.

It is what it is though and we'll just have to wait and see how it shakes out.